I started on a rocking horse and relied on watching ads to dominate the highway survival charts.

"I can't believe there's such a thing."

A huge maze made of countless red brick and granite walls quietly appeared before Huo Yunzhi and her companions, with horizontal pipes crisscrossing endlessly.

Qin Yuanshan couldn't help but mutter to himself, "This roadblock's ability has evolved way too much."

"What regulations?" Huo Yunzhi asked Wen Zhaoye.

"Let me think about it." Wen Zhaoye sat down on the spot, crossed his arms, and stared motionlessly at the maze in front of him.

After a moment, he stood up: "I have an idea."

"Wow! You're not going to tell me another little trick that only you know, are you?!" Qin Yuanshan exclaimed exaggeratedly.

"No, that's not it." Wen Zhaoye shrugged. "I have good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"

"Okay then."

"The reason why the roadblock ghost has become like this, besides blocking our way, is that, like the mirror ghost, it is guarding some kind of quest item."

Qin Yuanshan's expression was indescribable: "If this is considered good news, then how terrible must the bad news be?"

Wen Zhaoye gave him a "guess" look, and then continued, "As for the location of the props, I'm more inclined to think they're in the very center of the maze, so let's start by searching that."

Huo Yunzhi and the others nodded, showing no objection to Wen Zhaoye's suggestion.

"And the bad news?"

"The bad news is that this is our only chance to get the mission item; we had no hope of getting it in the previous or next round."

"What's the logic behind this?" Qin Yuanshan scratched his head again.

"In the first round, we encountered the obstacle, which was just a wall. In the second round, it transformed into a maze. Did you notice the pattern?"

"I can't figure it out." Qin Yuanshan gave up thinking.

"It's ascending to a higher dimension," Huo Yunzhi gritted her teeth.

"Dimensional ascension? Is it the dimensional ascension I understand?" Xu Xiu asked uncertainly.

"That's right, it's the one you're thinking of." Wen Zhaoye felt that ever since he entered this instance, a bitter smile had never left his face.

"If that's the case, then we can only get the item in this round." Shen Chilie began wiping the weapon in his hands.

Qin Yuanshan looked around, feeling like a primary school student who had accidentally wandered into an advanced mathematics classroom.

Seeing Qin Yuanshan's predicament, Wen Zhaoye took out the wooden stick from the previous round and drew a rectangle on the ground.

"Imagine this drawing of mine as a piece of paper, and then imagine it as the first obstacle blocking your way. At that time, it is a two-dimensional plane."

He used a twig to mark a point inside the rectangle: "This is the location of the prop. Now tell me, can you, in three dimensions, obtain a point on a two-dimensional plane?"

"I can't get it."

"That's why we couldn't access the mission items in the last round. Back then, the roadblocks were two-dimensional beings, and the walls were just their appearance."

Now it has risen to three dimensions, existing in the same dimension as us, becoming a real maze right before our eyes. The points on the paper have also been visualized in three-dimensional space, so that we can touch them.

Based on these premises, what do you think it will become in the next round?

"A four-dimensional being?"

"That's right. From a physical perspective, the fourth dimension is time. Back then, the roadblocks could hide items at any point in the past or future."

Wen Zhaoye made a crumpling motion as if he were crumpling a piece of paper: "It's like crumpling a piece of paper. Unless you go back in time, as a purely three-dimensional being, you will never be able to obtain it when it's still in its credential state. Do you understand what I mean?"

Qin Yuanshan instantly understood: "I get it!"

"Let's hurry in. The maze is too big. We must find the items before this round of resets." Shen Chilie was eager to try.

"Don't rush, Lao Shen," Wen Zhaoye stopped him. "Actually, there's a particularly useful solution to this maze."

Wen Zhaoye continued to draw a simple square maze on the ground with a small stick and marked a triangle at the center point.

"Computer Mouse Competition." ×2

Huo Yunzhi and Xu Xiu saw it immediately.

"That's right." Wen Zhaoye pointed to the maze on the ground: "It's easy to find the center point in our current time because we are in God's perspective and can know the entire path of the maze."

However, as computer mice entering the maze, we are unfortunate; all we see are walls. In previous computer maze competitions, many exploration methods have emerged to reach the finish line faster, such as depth-first search and breadth-first search.

The best solution to date is the floodfill algorithm.

What is the floodfill algorithm?

"Simply put, it means starting from the starting point and coloring or marking all connected areas, like pouring water into a maze. The water will flow along all the paths that can be walked and fill the entire connected area."

"A dead end will cause a blockage, while a flowing path will allow the flow to continue. What we need to do is find the path that keeps flowing towards the center."

Wen Zhaoye summoned the system light bottle, wrote the algorithm into code, and input it into the panoramic camera. Then he looked at Su Anning.

"Heh heh, finally it's my time to show off!" Su Anning put one hand on her hip, pointed the other at the maze, and shouted in a very childish way, "Come out, my darling!"

Miaomiao and Xiaoxiao suddenly appeared before everyone.

"You brought a vehicle in?" Huo Yunzhi felt like she was hallucinating.

"Hehe." Su Anning chuckled twice: "My road was merged with my senior's, right? Only one vehicle can be on a road, so my sled was fused and modified into my senior's vehicle. But Miaomiao and Xiaoxiao seem to have been left behind as pet props because they are living creatures."

Wen Zhaoye bent down and hung the panoramic camera around Miaomiao's neck, then patted its head: "Go, find the way."

"Woof woof woof!"

The two dogs barked a few times, then plunged into the maze without looking back.

Wen Zhaoye turned on the panoramic camera's lens sharing in the group chat, and Huo Yunzhi and the others instantly got Miaomiao's first-person perspective.

It races between countless walls, while the camera on its neck simultaneously draws a map of the maze.

"Amazing!" Qin Yuanshan exclaimed excitedly, "Old Wen, what did you do before you came to the highway? A teacher?"

"I guess so." Wen Zhaoye pushed up his glasses. "I've told you not to call me Old Wen, it makes me sound old."

"You still call Brother Shen that?" Qin Yuanshan saw Wen Zhaoye glare at him, so he clasped his hands in a fist and palm salute: "Alright, alright, Teacher Wen!"

Several tens of minutes later, Miaomiao stopped walking.

Through the footage fed back by the panoramic camera, they saw an inkwell lying quietly on the ground a few meters away from it.

Meanwhile, the half-map prototype being drawn simultaneously also vaguely shows that Miaomiao is currently at the center of the maze.

Everything went exactly as Wen Zhaoye had planned.

Wen Zhaoye was the first to step into the maze: "Let's go, let's set off."